Kay Scarpetta

Kay Scarpetta
First appearance	Postmortem
Created by	Patricia Cornwell
Information
Gender	Female
Occupation	Medical Examiner
Nationality	American

Kay Scarpetta is a fictional character and protagonist in a series of crime novels written by Patricia Cornwell (born 1956). She first appears in the 1990 novel Postmortem. The character was inspired by former Virginia Chief Medical Examiner Marcella Farinelli Fierro, MD (retired). The series is noted for the use of recent forensic technology in Scarpetta's investigations.

Dr. Kay Scarpetta was born in Miami, Florida, in 1954. She is of Italian descent on both sides of her family, with the Scarpettas emigrating from Verona, Italy. She is blonde and a sharp dresser, although always professional. As a young girl, she watched her father die slowly from leukemia and the experience has remained with her ever since, translating into her everyday work life, where she is surrounded by death. She is a perfectionist, an incredibly hard worker completely immersed in her work. Scarpetta loves to cook, particularly Italian food. She makes everything from scratch, including pasta and bread, and has a beautiful, custom-built restaurant kitchen in her home.

She was married once, to Tony Benedetti; they divorced about 6 years before the beginning of the first novel set in 1986, Postmortem. Since then she had a serious relationship with Mark James, who died in a bombing in a London Tube station (in the novel Cruel and Unusual) and later Benton Wesley, who was supposedly killed in Point of Origin but later reappeared. In 2007's The Book of the Dead, Scarpetta and Wesley become engaged. By the beginning of 2008's Scarpetta, Benton and Kay are married.

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